There are four major land use ethics: economic, preservationist, balanced multiple-use, and ecological.
A major portion of the national wealth is found in land. Land resources are vital as they supply food, water, timber, minerals, recreation, vegetation for grazing animals, and serve as habitat for wildlife. Land also provides spaces for homes, factories and roads.
Notice that small and large urban areas consisting of cities and towns occupy only about two percent of the total land area. Although this is a tiny fraction of the total land area, these urban areas must be supported by large cropland, range-land, watershed, forest, estuary and other non-urban land regions.
Thus, the various uses of urban and non-urban land are all interrelated.
Today, Cebu has become an attraction to migrants and investors who are interested in the island’s land resources.
Government-managed public land in Cebu make up no more than 35 percent of the island’s total land area of 539,762 hectares.
The private sector now owns 64.65 percent or 349,000 hectares, which need to be controlled by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) through legislation of land-use ethics.
Unless land use ethics is implemented now, Cebu’s fragile environmental will become degraded further.
It is suggested that the DENR review the major ethical view on land resource use.
The economic, or “use ‘it” ethic, considers land and its resources as commodities to be developed and used as the owners desire, to maximize their profits.
The preservationist, or “preserve it” ethic, seeks for the preservation of large portions of land from development, such as logging, mining and other interests.
Based on the preser-vationist’s view, land should be used only for non-destructive forms of outdoor recreation and spaces should be left as ecological reserves and living laboratories for learning how nature works.
Balanced multiple-use or scientific conservation ethic asserts that instead of being preserved, land resources should be used wisely for a variety of purposes, including logging, mining, recreation, grazing, wildlife protection and water conservation. This land-use ethic is based on the belief that land should be managed in ways that do not damage or deplete resources so future generations would still be able to reap benefits.
The ecological or sustainable earth ethic contends that land and its resources should be treated with love and respect by balancing human needs with those of other living creatures, with the overall goal of preserving the capacity of large amounts of land for self renewal of plant and animal life.
To illustrate, Cebu leads other provinces in the Central Visayas in terms of household demand for firewood.
For Cebu, the level of consumption of firewood in urban areas is lower than in rural places where 78.48 percent are firewood users consuming 15 cubic meters of firewood per household per year.
Of the total number of firewood users, 52 percent purchased firewood while 48 percent gathered or produced their own.
The projected demand for firewood by the year 2015 is 20.15 million cubic meters and the estimated forest cover to answer the need is 243,300 hectares.
Do we always take proper care of our resources? Will Gov. Gwedolyn Garcia have the political will to implement the reforestation project of the DENR, considering that the private sector controls 65 percent of the hinterlands in the province?
On the other hand, how can reforestation succeed when only 35 percent of Cebu’s land are within government control?
Let us support and ask Congress to upgrade DENR’s budgetary allocation to effectively implement environmental laws.
